Why do old emulated games still suffer from slowdown and lag when they run on modern computers?

Question

Why do old emulated games still suffer from slowdown and lag when they run on modern computers?

In: 36

Answer 1

Old games were written to be ran on different hardware, and different operating system. With consoles specifically, often optimized heavily for that machine/OS.

It’s equivalent to you operating a set of controls labeled in Russian, by following instructions written in French, but you only speak and read English, and only have a couple translation books to go by.

It’s a very inefficient way to work, and there often “missing instructions” because not everything has a good or direct translation.